>This breakdown is why I think the XML group needs to add a fourth item
>to its agenda, to be dealt with last, and that is a distributed font or
>glyph service for XML.
Yes. I've been wanting to do such a thing for a few years now. It could
be a very valuable capability.
><p>blah blah <char font="font://www.blah/dame-sans" code="223"
>alt="&#XFAB1"/>
> blah</p>
I'd rather give the character a name, and use a resolution mechanism
to derive a glyph (and thence a glyph image) from it.
<char name="FOO">
My idea was to have 2 services: A Global Character Repository, and a
Global Glyph Repository. The GCR would contain mappings from character
names into glyph names, with alternates. The GGR would allow
resolution of the glyph name to some glyph image representation.
I have given a few talks about this over the last few years, and most
people seem not to understand it, or do not understand the value of
it.
If people are actually interested in *doing* this, I would be willing
to start a mailing list etc. to move ahead on it (ie. I'm saying is
shouldn't be part of the XML charter, but does need to be done).